Batman – The Dark Night

I love comics. I didn’t really grow up with them, but started reading when I was a teen. Although I don’t pick them up anymore, I’ve got LOTS. My favorite comic book heroes are: Batman, Superman and Spiderman.

I like Batman perhaps the most because of the fact that he’s like you and I. The world that Batman lives in is not entirely fantasy. I mean, neither is the world Superman or Spiderman are in — but the fact that they exist is fantasy. Whereas with Batman… he became a superhero through sheer will and brute force.

I’ve seen all the Batman movies to date. The early ones were OK… well at the time they were pretty good but looking back they were pretty crappy.

I saw Batman Begins weeks ago, and was really impressed by it. I thought the movie was very well done.

So you can bet that I’m really looking forward to the newest movie in the Batman franchise – Batman – The Dark Night.

The villians that the Batman takes on are great. I’ve seen quite a few trailers and even more fan generated trailers. The work they’ve done on the Joker is great! I am really looking forward to seeing this movie. In case you have not seen the trailer, here is one from YouTube that I really enjoyed watching.

Of all the villians that Batman has taken on, The Joker has got to be one of the best. Although Jack Nichols did a great job of The Joker, he was waaaaaay to pudgy. If you’ve ever read the comic books and some of the graphic novels – The Joker was always tall, and lanky. He had that certain physique that terrorized you along with the green hair, white face and the insidious and hideous smile.

One graphic novel that I really enjoyed was “The Greatest Jokder Stories Ever Told” - very well done, and the artwork was superb. However my favourite as to be “Batman The Killing Joke” by Alan Moore, Briand Bolland and John Higgins. I love the way they drew The Joker inthis novel. To me, this was the essence of The Joker – this WAS The Joker.

Here is what “digi_matrix” had to say about this novel on the Gamespot forums… now I’m going to have to dig out my copy and read it!

Batman: The Killing Joke – One of the most breathtaking and gut-wrenching stories that details the origins of the Joker in the form of the Red Hood days. You might not necessarily agree this is his ‘true’ origin but as Joker says himself, he can’t remember much they’re all a mess in his head.

Writer Alan Moore and artist Brian Bolland’s graphic novel The Killing Joke tells two parallel stories. The first story involves the Joker’s senseless assault on Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, Barbara (the former Batgirl), his kidnapping and torment of Gordon, and finally Batman’s pursuit of, and final confrontation with, the Joker. The second story, intercut with the first (and connected by Moore’s signature graphic matching to prompt a flashback), is Moore’s retelling of the origin of the Joker. In DC lore pre-Moore, the Joker had been a small-time hoodlum known as the Red Hood who fell into a vat of chemicals during a confrontation with Batman; just as in Tim Burton’s 1989 movie, the chemicals turned his skin bone-white, his hair green and his lips red.

In The Killing Joke, Moore alters the story to make “The Red Hood” a gimmick used by a group of thugs to dupe a feckless patsy into playing “The Red Hood” (the fall guy) for them. The patsy in question is a stand-up comic whose pregnant wife has just been killed in a freak electrocution. He’s a man with nothing to lose. The comic finds himself face-to-face with the Batman (who thinks he has tracked down his enemy, the Red Hood) and ends up in the vat. At the other end of the drain-pipe, he finds he did have something to lose after all – his sanity. The two stories eventually come together in a moment of understanding between Batman and the Joker: they both had a “bad day,” once, when everything changed – a moment of pure insanity that turned their worlds upside-down, and set them on a collision course with one another. The story ends with Batman laughing at one of the Joker’s jokes – a situation normally unimaginable in a Batman/Joker story. This bond between the two arch-foes is the reason The Killing Joke is such a hit: it’s a beautiful, almost metatheatrical moment when two actors in a deadly tragedy step outside the curtain to share their thoughts and fears about the harsh poetics of their universe.

I am definately looking forward to seeing the movie, Batman – The Dark Night and especially the character of The Joker.

About Rob 'n Mo

I'm a man of mystery. I like anonymity, but on the WWW there is not much of it...